However, it’s interesting to think about how predictions like these work and keep returning as rumors until eventually they come to fruition. It’s like the iTablet rumor that keeps cycling around Apple. Eventually, Apple’s going to look at the numbers and say “well enough people have been clamoring for this since 2000 and now it looks like it would make sense for our market strategy and the cost can be minimized” etc etc, and actually make one of these. Maybe.

To give you some perspective, back when I was lead blogger for TUAW and Weblogs, Inc. was pre-AOL buyout, Jason Calacanis used to regularly blog about how he believed Google was going to come out with an office suite (they did) and how that would be followed by a Google OS. For example, in this post from 2006, called GooglePC with GoogleOS he notes: “Eric Schmidt told me to my face at CES last year that they would never do an Office Suite–which of course they did.” Then he predicted: “The Google OS will come out in 2007, and in 2008/2009 the Windows upgrade cycle will be ankled.” So he was a little ahead of the curve with the prediction. Jason is regularly ahead of the curve with such things. I think he’d been blogging about GoogleOS since 2004, but I cannot find his first post about it (most likely because of the whole calacanis.weblogsinc.com to calacanis.com domain name switcheroo).

In any case, I just thought I’d do a little backtracking through some of the highlight posts from people I read regularly discussing the Google OS. We’ve all been discussing it for at least five years and its been a floating, returning theme of our big online conversation. TechCrunch’s prediction was a safe bet and nothing to pat its back over, although doing so publicly and loudly is expected from TechCrunch as it’s a good bit of self-branding as a grand prognosticator and an excellent bit of self-promotion.

And hopefully that will be my last post “picking on” TechCrunch for a while.

As for my thoughts on Google Chrome OS: I can’t wait to try it out on my Asus Eee PC 4G. I don’t think it will grow to challenge either Microsoft or Apple though. As I noted earlier on Twitter, “2 Chrome OS problems: 1. will tip them into a hot bed of anti-monopoly probing. 2. Google does too many things at once & only a handful well.” There’s my set of predictions for what they’re worth (which as with all predictions, isn’t much).

4 Responses to Interesting road to Google Chrome OS—UPDATE

Its groundbreaking idea from Google web OS and they are planning to wipe out Windows in a most strategic manner. Google clearly pointing to Microsoft when they say “The operating systems that browsers run were designed in an era where there was no web”. But there are few questions which are unanswered like what will happen when we will go offline in Chrome OS? Can we use offline applications like iTunes or Photoshop? Can we run third party applications? How they are going to make profit from it ? I am also bit concerned whether Chrome OS will be embraced by enterprises as it is open source and web based as there is always a security issue….Just wait another thought can Chrome OS will become a global hit especially in small countries where internet is very fickle. But leaving these things aside its going to be win-win situation for the users and it will be interesting to witness the war between giants.

You’ve touched nerves with that post, I can imagine… Are you implying that there are somehow more security risks with using F/LOSS applications? Hmm. I wouldn’t think so. But there have been some notable slip-ups I suppose.

I remember when it was thought that AOL might do one back in the 90s. It seems to me that whoever the top dog in the fight is against MS, the media clamors for them to build an OS. Any calls for it are less Nostradamus and more par for the course.

Really, really curious to see Google’s take on a linux windowing system though. I’m assuming they’ll build on top of x11, but will it be gnome/kde based? something else? Or are they talking about something else?

Much of the ‘issues’ with linux is just not having enough ui standardization. Google may be big enough to get everyone on the same page. The potential for linux as a whole if/when that happens is huge.

Maybe, but Chrome hasn’t taken over the marketplace in terms of browsers either. Explorer is still the most widely used browser by far. Also, Linux has been around for a long time with no huge uptick in usage. As Michael Gartenberg pointed out earlier today in this post:http://gartenblog.net/2009/07/08/chrome-os-is-not-a-threat-to-windows/
…the largest growing computer area, netbooks, went from being mostly Linux when it was a niche market to Windows XP when it started gaining ground.

This is a huge mistake by the vast majority of people soaking in and discussing bleeding edge technology, especially online web technology, on a day to day basis. They forget that the average majority user doesn’t know what a “browser” is, let alone what Google Chrome is, and they often confuse “Google” with “search” and have no earthly inkling what OS means until you spell it out for them, and at that point they think it is synonymous with Windows or they may actually know that there is Windows or Mac OS X. Google ChromeOS won’t even show up on their radar. They *might* have heard of Firefox.